Right-Wingers’ Latest Conspiracy: Immigrant Children are a Bigger Threat than ISIS

On Monday, Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Secretary, said that the “worst is over for now” regarding the situation with unaccompanied children attempting to enter the US illegally through the southern border. Johnson explained that the influx of children had peaked in May and June and has declined substantially since then, Salon reported.

While this should come as good news to the right wing nut-jobs who would put America under an impenetrable dome to keep immigrants out, they are now focusing their conspiratorial efforts on where those children have gone and what they might be plotting in an attempt to bring down the US.

On an episode of Fox and Friends last week, Steve Doocy explained that while the Islamic State (ISIS) is a threat, the US government is going about taking them down. Efforts need to be focused at our border with Mexico because that’s where they’re planning to invade.

Speaking of terrorism, everybody is looking toward next week. It will be the anniversary of September 11. What’s interesting now is you know those 37,000 kids who streamed across our southern border over the last year or so? Where did they go? Federal government isn’t telling us that. All we do know for sure is that our southern border is wide open and now there’s a report from Judicial Watch that apparently ISIS is working in the border town across the river from El Paso, Ciudad Juarez. There is a lot of chatter. Radio chatter and other things, talk indicating that ISIS is going to carry out an attack on the border very, very soon. Could be car bombs. Could be vehicle borne bombs. Don’t know. There is just a lot of talk about how ISIS is across the river and could come over at any time.

Never mind that both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have said that there are no credible threats to the US homeland from ISIS. And never mind that the vast majority of violence near the southern border involves heavily-armed drug cartels. Clearly, these nearly 40,000 children have decided to convert to radical Islam and are planning a massive terrorist attack.

Pat Buchanan is at least a little more honest in his ridiculous fear of the Central American children. The former presidential candidate was a guest on Laura Ingraham’s radio show earlier this week and said that if the new immigrants don’t vote Republican, which they statistically do not, America will be destroyed. RightWing Watch posted the audio from the interview in which Buchanan said:

“Look, we’d better realize here that the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, and the bleeding border along our southern border, the mass movement of people from all over the world into this country, the decomposition of this country socially and culturally, politically, all of these things, it seems to me, are far greater long-term threats to the United States than even those dreadful characters over there in Syria or Iraq beheading people.

…

It’s going to change the politics in America too. Because given the mammoth size of the welfare state with maybe 100 mill benefiting from it, and folks coming in by and large who are very poor and lack education and the rest of it, and become increasingly dependent on government, I think this is going result in a dramatic increase in democratic strength — gradually, I guess I should say rather than dramatically, and it’s going to be difficult for a conservative party … to ever really get national power. So I think these things are far more serious long term threats that from ISIL or whatever they call it now.”

Buchanan’s fears are probably more accurate than those of Judicial Watch and Steve Doocy: immigrants have been more likely to vote for Democratic candidates — maybe because those candidates don’t compare them to or lump them in with radical, extremist, terrorist organizations. Having such a large block of new voters supporting Democrats won’t destroy America, but it could destroy the Republican party, which to the GOP, really is scarier than any terrorist attack.